Interval

Press Release

Zilberman Gallery is proud to announce Defne Tesal’s project exhibition Interval, which will be presented at the gallery’s project space.

Tesal works with abstract spaces, planes, color fields, and textures in her works, interested in control and chance, calmness and force, experience, experimentation, process, repetitions, and rhythm. The artist is inspired by both details and the generality of nature, the textures within it, vast empty spaces, human emotions, concept of time, color, instrumental music. She produces two- and three-dimensional works using thread, yarn, rope, fiber and fabric.

The artist intervenes in the Zilberman Gallery project space with her project Interval, constructed with nylon panty hose tied into ropes. The tensions of the woman’s hosiery spreads across the whole space, inviting the viewer to explore this tension. Movement is also added on to the installation through this experience, becoming a part of the space through a new dimension, a new form of dynamism.

The artist articulates the ideas behind the exhibition: “I would like to construct a space that is not described—an ambiguous space. A undefined gap that we could exist in, a threshold. The undefined, ambiguous interval between two situations, a spatial and temporal gap, the in-between moment.

I want the work to be touched. For it to be touched, for people to pass through it, walking softly. The nylon threads could be pulled, tightened, watched, experienced. We could see the vibration, we can feel it. Our bodies should hit it as we walk through, rubbing up against it, touching it; we could be able to penetrate it both mentally and physically.”

The ropes between the ceiling and the floor and the consequent space vibrates with the viewer’s participation; the image becomes moving. The stockings are not only connected to each other but also to the viewer’s perception, defining new directions of thought.

Defne Tesal’s installation Interval that has been constructed completely open to mutual interventions between space, material, and the viewer, will be presented at Zilberman Gallery’s project space until August 15th.

Defne Tesal (b. 1985) graduated from the Department of Scenery and Costumes at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in 2010. She participated in the one-month residency program at the School of Visual Arts, New York, supported by the Moon and Stars scholarship. Tesal won the Istanbul Rotary Art Competition in 2016. The artist opened her first solo exhibition “Window Seat” at Galeri Artist Çukurcuma, Istanbul, in 2013. Her other solo exhibitions are: “Cocoon”, Galeri 5 (2015); “Silent Flow”, France (2014). She participated in various group exhibitions, including the Istanbul Rotary Art Competition Exhibition (2016), SVA Open Studio, New York and “Intersection”, International Textile Artists Exhibition (2014). The artist lives and works in Istanbul.